Hot Topics for IPC on July 2, 2025

Hot Topics With Saskia v. Popescu, PhD, MPH, MA, CIC, FAPIC

Portable Biocontainment in the Era of Public Health Cuts

Last week, the Administration for Strategic Preparedness and Response (ASPR) coordinated an exercise, Tranquil Passport, across several health care and public health partners to test real-world conditions for high-consequence disease management.

Per an ASPR press release, “This 4-day national exercise, which kicked off today, tests the United States’ ability to isolate and safely transfer multiple patients with high-consequence infectious diseases (HCID) during a simulated international health emergency. The event is timed in preparation for the FIFA World Cup 2026, which is expected to draw millions of visitors to North America, amplifying the need for advanced biosafety infrastructure and coordination.

“The PBCU (portable biocontainment unit) enables secure long-range transport of multiple patients with suspected or confirmed HCID. Tranquil Passport is the first time the PBCU has been activated under field conditions, offering valuable data to refine future operations and real-world response.”

Despite a great exercise last week on the transportation of a patient with a high-consequence pathogen, the FY26 proposed budget is set to devastate ASPR, including the elimination of the Hospital Preparedness Program (HPP). If you’re curious about the work that ASPR does and its value to health care efforts (including the underlying value of facility preparedness), check out the technical assistance request from 2024, which shared some helpful information on how hospital preparedness saves money. This serves as an important reminder with the latest round of health cuts.

The New York Times recently published a helpful infographic article that breaks down the impacts on various agencies, programs, and what this means for reach and overall public health. There are also global health impacts resulting from the USAID defunding, which you can explore further here.

Antimicrobial Resistance, Livestock Manure, and Global Health

Poop. We love to talk about it, especially when it involves antimicrobial resistance (AMR). A new study from Michigan State University sought to delve into the world of livestock (such farming consumes 70% of global antibiotics each year), manure, and the pattern of resistome (the antibiotic-resistant genes in the microbiome).

Sifting through 4,017 livestock manure metagenomics from across 26 countries, the research team catalogued their findings to spell out the magnitude of antibiotic-resistant genes (AGR).

The findings were fascinating. “We identified 2291 ARG subtypes from 4017 fecal metagenomes, potentially conferring resistance to 30 antibiotic classes,” the authors wrote. “All 3 manure types harbored an open pan-resistome, with chicken manure showing the highest ARG diversity (2107 subtypes), followed by swine (1779 subtypes) and bovine manures (1546 subtypes). On average, each chicken manure sample carried 246 ARG subtypes and 4.33 copies per cell, higher than those in swine manure (203 subtypes and 3.12 copies per cell) and bovine manure (129 subtypes and 0.89 copies per cell).”

In other words, chicken manure is rich in ARG, and when examined across continents, it was found that swine in Asia had the highest level of resistance diversity and were ultimately the most abundant. This is a fascinating example of One Health and AMR. You can read more here.

Health News and Articles Worth Reading:

• New Mexico reports more measles cases (8 in total), bringing the state’s total to 94. Cases were reported at a detention facility, which is also where 5 cases were identified last week.
• Hero Program and hand hygiene – a data-driven approach to improving hand hygiene through a reward system.
• The US is slipping deeper into baseless antivaccine habits and losing protection.